The Scottish Naturalist. 165 



eat any part of them ; but they carry them off and split them up 

 to feed on the numerous grubs that are generally found sticking in 

 and around the partly decayed tubers. They are much more 

 destructive in the turnip field ; and indeed in the north of Rox- 

 burghshire and in Lower Selkirkshire the damage they do to the 

 turnip crop is a matter of very grave importance. All over the 

 country they have always been in the habit more or less of pulling up 

 considerable quantities of turnips in the early stage of their existence 

 on the prowl for grubs ; but it is only of late years that they have 

 taken to feed largely on the bulbs of turnips — this in winter and 

 the early spring. I have seen one heap of turnips of perhaps ten 

 tons brought in from the field to the farmyard, more bulbs broken 

 and partly eaten than there were whole bulbs, and this was done 

 entirely by rooks. On the same farm in the severe winter of 

 1 880-1, the rooks actually fed from the boxes along with the sheep 

 (hoggets) on cut turnips. From the farms of Netherbarns, Rink, 

 Fairnalee, Meigle, Caddonlee, Newhall, Kilnknowe, and Holly- 

 bush, all in Lower Selkirkshire, and in all several thousand acres 

 in extent, I have reports from the respective tenants, all of whom 

 state that they have lost considerably from the damage done by 

 rooks to their turnips in winter and spring. They eat green-top 

 yellows, but are fonder of Swedes. They dig into the bulbs and 

 make pear-shaped holes, and when these fill with water and freeze, 

 the bulbs go down whenever a thaw sets in. They also take up 

 clover in several districts, and here and there do much damage to 

 that plant ; but their end in uprooting it seems to be more to secure 

 grubs than to eat the plant. They do eat the plant, however. 



" The rook has other eating proclivities which make it anything 

 but a favourite with numerous gamekeepers and sportsmen; for, over 

 and above eating of what already has been noticed, and of carrion, 

 it annually destroys for its maw large quantities of the eggs of 

 pheasants and partridges, and of barndoor hens that ' lay away.' 

 Eggs it is most severe on in dry cold weather, when grubs are 

 scarce ; and the egg season of pheasants and partridges is the 

 season when rooks have young, a time that in a droughty spring 

 presses hard on their industry ; hence their readiness to go a-nest- 

 ing when grubs are few. I know of several rookeries near game 

 preserves where the keepers have told me repeatedly that more 

 than half of the game birds were able to bring up broods from the 

 second laying only, the first having been entirely gobbled up by 

 the rooks. They generally carry the contents of the eggs in their 

 bill-sack or pouch to their young. 



